Penguin Student Design Awards - 100 Thumbnails

I am currently creating a new design to submit for the Penguin Student Design Awards 2018. A competition held by Penguin Books for students across the UK. I have chosen the children's book category and Malorie Blackman's 'Noughts & Crosses' as I felt that my style of work best fitted the subject of this book.

To begin considering different options for cover design elements, I created a series of 100 thumbnails. This gave me the opportunity for detailed consideration of layout, framing and cropping of imagery.

Having read the book, I already had an understanding of key narrative points that related to visual imagery I could use, in particular the Rose Garden, Letters, Telephones and skin colour caught my attention for their potential. I therefore developed these across individual pages, with 20 thumbnails for each theme.

Since creating these thumbnails, I have conducted some further research into existing book cover designs. Many of my Telephone designs looked to similar to designs for Rainbow Rowell's 'Landline' young adult novel. This is a book which is in a similar bracket and target market as 'Noughts & Crosses' so I need to avoid overlapping visual elements to reduce confusion between the two popular novels.

Thinking ahead, it looked like my sketches would suit Lino prints, or some other form of printing, because of the strong white/black contrast, especially in the thorn thumbnails. I am interested in this as a possibility, but I also think these thumbnails could be created through photography or painting. I would like to utilise technology and the control it offers when finalising my design.